Experimental investigation on cooling surface heat transfer behavior of a thermally activated building system in warm and humid zones

Abstract

Thermally Activated Building System (TABS), is one of the alternative cooling methodology, due to the numerous advantages it provides the building industry. This system consists of encapsulated pipes within the building structure to control the surface temperature, which helps to remove the sensible heat from the indoor. The objective of this investigation is to experimentally evaluate the influence of cooling surface area and the effect of cooling water inlet flow velocities on the TABS performance in the warm and humid zone under natural ventilation, and the experimental results were compared with the conventional building (CB), which does not have any cooling arrangements. An increase in water inlet velocity from 0.35 to 1.5 m/s substantially removes the thermal energy stored in the TABS, and reduces the average indoor temperature by 3 °C. In a CB, the average heat gain of all surfaces varies from −3 W/m2 to 13 W/m2. Moreover, in all surface cooling (ASC), it varied from −2 W/m2 to 24 W/m2. This resulted in increased surface cooling, which increased the surface heat gain and indoor cooling capacity. There are no significant thermal behaviour and heat transfer variations at 1 m/s and 1.5 m/s of inlet water flow velocities.